UC Berkeley SB9 housing report calls out City of Sonoma

The language surrounding the housing crisis in California has changed over the past year, from Gov. Gavin Newsom declaring “NIMBYism is destroying” the state, to the passage of Senate Bill 9 last September that all but ended single-family zoning.

The University of California, Berkeley, released a new report analyzing the impact of SB 9 on 10 cities, including the City of Sonoma, and how those cities’ requirements may inhibit the goals of SB 9 and stymie the creation of housing.

Also known as the California HOME Act, SB 9 enables residents to split their parcel or create a duplex without local government approval, provided it meets the requirements. The creation of additional housing this through these methods is said to help homeowners build inter-generational wealth, preserve historic neighborhoods and promote strategic infill of communities.

The report criticizes the city’s regulations concerning deed-restricted housing, affordable impact fees, the 600 square feet of open space required per residential unit and “at least three mature trees and 10 shrubs to be planted.” These regulations, the report’s authors argue, prevent residents from utilizing SB 9 by creating a heavier financial burden and excessive yellow tape.

But members of the Sonoma City Council, who approve new housing proposals, said the city is a unique situation as a small town masquerading as a tourism destination. And the Sonoma Valley Housing Group, a nonprofit focused on addressing the housing shortage, described SB 9 as a “false hope” to address Sonoma’s acute affordable housing crisis.

A unique case

“The problem with (SB 9) is, in my view, is that it’s a one-size-fits-all approach for California from Sacramento,” Vice Mayor Kelso Barnett said. “Many communities around the state did not allow you to split a parcel or did not allow you to develop duplexes... the issue is Sonoma has always allowed you to have duplexes.”

The issue, Barnett states, is that no matter how much housing is built in Sonoma, it will never be enough to meet the demand of all the people who want to move here. That point is shared with Sonoma Valley Housing Group community advocate Dave Ransom, of Santa Rosa.

“If you create more units in the City of Sonoma, they're going to be sold to wealthy techies coming out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley using them to either work from home or as second homes,” Ransom said. “So the prices are not going to go down.”

Unlike some of the other cities cited in the study like Woodside — which attempted to reclassify itself as a mountain lion sanctuary to avoid denser housing rules imposed by SB 9 — don’t have the destination factor or brand recognition that Sonoma does, Ransom said.

Mayor Jack Ding said Sonoma must strike a balance between maintaining the “invisible asset” of Sonoma’s small-town character that makes the city a tourist destination, and addressing the acute housing shortage.

“Although this kind of value you cannot see, this is an invisible asset that we should preserve, and also carry it forward to the future,” Ding said. “We cannot compromise our younger generations’ right to using the land.”

While Ransom agrees that Sonoma will continue to draw intense demand that will not easily be solved by SB 9 or other housing policies, he has a new suggestion for a possible solution. Ransom envisions a centralized housing project owned and controlled by a local public entity that could serve the needs of Sonoma Valley residents.

Until Sonoma sees a revolution that tosses out the free market however, Barnett said Ransom’s plan is not likely to come to fruition in Sonoma Valley.

Ding and Barnett each pushed back against the UC Berkeley report’s framing of Sonoma, saying the regulations around trees and shrubs have been in place and are required for all new buildings and that these are not new regulations to burden homeowners from using SB 9. And affordability requirements are intended for “the people that need them” and not as weekend cottages for tourists.

The report states these affordability requirements “can be well-intended, but deed-restricted affordable housing requirements may make it challenging — or impossible — for projects to financially pencil without subsidies or offsets” for property owners.

The housing needs cited in the Regional Housing Needs Assessment — a state housing policy that mandates local housing requirements — has been met in each of the past five cycles, Barnett said. Entering the sixth RHNA cycle in 2023, the city must add 311 units of housing across incomes within the next eight years, according to a report released in December.

If the city wanted to not only meet RHNA cycle numbers, but also meet the demand of the public to put downward pressure on housing prices, Barnett said, it would have to build as many as 3,000 homes, or 10 times the amount cited by RHNA.

Yet the “small-town character” of Sonoma is one of the main drivers of Sonoma’s economic success, Ding said. Barnett framed it as a dichotomy: the regions housing needs could be met but it may sacrifice the unique “sense of place” that fills tasting rooms with tourists most weekends.

“A lot of people always say ‘character’ is a word that means exclusion. And maybe that's true,” Barnett said. “Unfortunately, our sense of place and our character is our entire local economy.”

Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.